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Last Night a CORE bar saved my life

Long time no blog.

I blame it on GrilledCheezGuy action and all the hard work I am putting into getting prepared for GrilledCheezGuy 2.0, which is basically the GrilledCheezTruck. With the amount of fans, followers, and food-frenzied requests we get for ourselves, I know the time has come both for GCG, and for me in my life and my career. I love working in the food scene and putting happy smiles on hungry faces with our famous sammy or a new recipe like a grilled peach or pie cups. Your loyalty and love for us will hopefully be big enough and strong enough to get us on the streets of San Francisco starting in 2013.

But that’s another story that will be discussed daily starting Sept 21st, 2012.

Today I want to share a story that first requires you all to get the pun of the title. If you are not someone who was ever into techno even a little tinsy winsy bit, then you might never have heard about this song so first go here and see this version of the classic: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yz9VWwqhqPQ Now you get it.

“Getting” is the subject and moral of this here story about how a CORE bar saved my life, arguably in more ways than one. And they can save yours too. Honest.

Fittingly, the very man who made the very CORE bars, COREy, would most dubitably argue that CORE bars can (if you eat them) and will (when you eat them) save your life through many nutritional benefits alone. CORE bars are meal replacement bars that you drink with two glasses of water, as per the simple looking instructions on the back of them. They say “Eat 1 Pack + Drink 2 glasses of water = 1 Full Bowl of Oatmeal.” I enjoy the simplicity of this equation and his intentions, but he is leaving out a whole crowd of people who either have never tried oatmeal, don’t like oatmeal, and lastly the group who knows that 1 full bowl of oatmeal is not really equal to much of anything for their beastly selves.

There are 2 types of bars: Defender and Warrior bars. When you feel like going out into nature and kicking ass, you take the warrior. When you think someone or some microbe perhaps is going to come kick your ass, you take the defender. Is any of that true? No. But what is true is I started eating the bars every day for a month before I got a tad bored (not by the bars at all) and also was about to go camping and realized these CORE bars had a lot of advantages to saving and brining The main one I saw coming was the fact that I could get a full meal in a small amount of space for less weight and more room in the bear food trap. That lovely black cylinder given to you by the park rangers at Yosemite National Park (or whatever other bear parks you trek to) that each group of people throw a distance away from their tent directly proportional to the level of fear they have for bears. Going off the getting light with this 3 day camping trek mantra, I decided to go mostly CORE bars for food and brought only a few extra splurges. The splurges camping in Yosemite always have to be things you will eat the first night while drinking heavily to celebrate you making it to the furthest point you could walk to.

We walked a good 5 miles in and finally decided we had found a good spot by the river. We definitely had. A few hours later another group of people had the same decision, which only was slightly annoying because we saw no one for the entire walk and then ended up with neighbors. Being that they made it this far into the wild, they probably weren’t going to mind seeing two men acting a little wild for the next two days and we really didn’t want to move from our little cove paradise. The paradise that came complete with a nice 8 point buck that greeted us upon arrival with a somewhat arrogant holding of his ground and staring of his eyes. My Texan dad taught me a thing or two and I know there something called rut season and I know it means they get horny or something so I decided he was a horny deer. The deer visited throughout the first day and even stopped by at an inopportune moment when we were together in the tent. I think it was my first strange eye contact with an animal while having sex, and unless I get a cat or dog of my own, I hope it will be my last.

During the afternoon, clouds loomed and even sprinkled us while day hiking so we turned around when the thunder rolled once through the valley and reminded us we had not prepared for rain. We hurried back and watched as the clouds teased us and lighting and booming thunder came once and a while. We started a fire, ate our dinner CORE bar, and went down to the river to enjoy the water and the remaining daylight among the storm. Our neighbors had followed camping code and never really bothered or acknowledged as it is mostly respectful to do until that evening when the man started walking towards us from the other bank. When he got somewhat close I realized he was a dad and they were a family of sorts. He immediately said to us that we better not be thinking of cooking any dinner or food tonight because there was a bear over at their campsite, a big bear. Although I am a man myself, the fact that this dad said it with a definite fear in his voice and manner, I immediately jumped to and told my novice camping companion to come with me immediately. I watched as the dad carefully walked back to his campsite and as we reached ours both darkness and the storm raced to beat each other to our site. Although they tell me what to do when a bear is attacking you I didn’t really know what you were supposed to do when a bear was nearby your campsite exactly. Do you want to have a fire or not have a fire? The family decided to go with the huddle together and point flashlights outward from all sides which was effective and eerie from our vantage point. We would have performed a two man lighthouse version of this if we had even one flashlight to use. Instead we stood for a while with the fire still going in between the oncoming raindrops and looked as far as the light glowed outward. When COREy (different from COREy the CORE bar owner) mentioned he needed to pee I told him to get it done now so we could lock up in the tent and ride out the big bear and oncoming storm. He walked a few feet away as I held my flaming tipped stick up in defense and sometimes smacked against our chair log to make noise.

It was at that moment that out of the darkness came not the big bear, but the horny ass deer standing almost opposite the fire to me. My nerdy fantasy side instantly questioned whether Harry Potter and his Patronus had showed up to blast the bear nearby but the deers odd look and 8 pointer racked march forward towards brought me back to reality. I slammed and cracked my fire stick on the log and he only stopped and kept his head looking and somewhat lowered. When he made another step at me I threw the other piece towards him and he ran off into the darkness. This whole stare down and forward march with the deer happened all while COREy was peeing and he only heard me say “the deer is back” while I proceeded to stick bash and throw quickly after. It was a very odd moment and we later decided that the deer might not only have been in rut, but might have been in gay rut as I decided he had been watching us all weekend and came back at night, a very odd time for a deer to walk up with a fire, and see if he could join us. I’m now not sure which is worse: a horny gay deer or a big bear.

Alas, we made it through the night alive with no smells of chemicals or additives or processed foods or anything but pure, natural, organic food inside us and outside us that made the big bear realize we were not worth it. The family across the river, however, was obviously not. They obviously didn’t also have less of a load to carry in and more energy to walk back up the rough and steep switchbacks that await you for the last 1.5 miles of the hike like us. One could argue that we might not have survived like we did if it weren’t for CORE bars. If I had not learned about the benefits of the CORE products and brought them on my trip, the story I would be telling you would have probably involved horror surrounding hot dogs and beans that would have brought on the beast AND widened our waists. J

So check out CORE bars online and in many of your local bay area stores nowadays, including Whole Foods! If you ever see the COREy man himself, make sure to say hi and thank him for saving the GrilledCheezGuy for you. CORE bars can save your life too!

With all my cheesiness,

Michael

PS – CONGRATULATIONS TO STEVEN YUEN! He became our 1000th fan on Facebook and won the honor of FREE GRILLED CHEESE FOR LIFE! Everytime he shows up at one of our public events, he can come straight up and get his sammy! Thank you all for the support and I look forward to sharing a lot more food stories with you and will definitely be screaming from the four corners of the internet world come Sept 21st!